Revelation 21:26

And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

21:22-27 Perfect and direct communion with God, will more than supply the place of gospel institutions. And what words can more full express the union and co-equality of the Son with the Father, in the Godhead? What a dismal world would this be, if it were not for the light of the sun! What is there in heaven that supplies its place? The glory of God lightens that city, and the Lamb is the Light thereof. God in Christ will be an everlasting Fountain of knowledge and joy to the saints in heaven. There is no night, therefore no need of shutting the gates; all is at peace and secure. The whole shows us that we should be more and more led to think of heaven as filled with the glory of God, and enlightened by the presence of the Lord Jesus. Nothing sinful or unclean, idolatrous, or false and deceitful, can enter. All the inhabitants are made perfect in holiness. Now the saints feel a sad mixture of corruption, which hinders them in the service of God, and interrupts their communion with him; but, at their entrance into the holy of holies, they are washed in the laver of Christ's blood, and presented to the Father without spot. None are admitted into heaven who work abominations. It is free from hypocrites, such as make lies. As nothing unclean can enter heaven, let us be stirred up by these glimpses of heavenly things, to use all diligence, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And they shall bring ... - See the notes on Revelation 21:24. That blessed world shall be made up of all that was truly valuable and pure on the earth.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

26. All that was truly glorious and excellent in the earth and its converted nations shall be gathered into it; and while all shall form one Bride, there shall be various orders among the redeemed, analogous to the divisions of nations on earth constituting the one great human family, and to the various orders of angels.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Whatsoever is excellent or desirable in the world, shall be supplied to the souls of those that are in heaven, by good of another make, but which shall be equally (nay, infinitely more) satisfactory to the soul.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. The glory of the nations are the people of God, who, though they are reckoned the filth of the world, are the excellent in the earth; these will be brought into this city, and be presented to the King of it, in a glorious manner, and that by the kings of the earth; either such who have been ecclesiastical rulers over them, who will introduce them as their joy and crown of rejoicing; or who have been political governors of them, their fathers and protectors; or the sense is as before, that whatever is great and glorious in the nations of the world, will be counted as nothing in comparison of the glory and magnificence of this state, and not to be mentioned with it: the Arabic version renders it, "the nations shall bring glory and honour to it"; in the sense before given.

Geneva Study Bible

And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

From the tradition of En. liii. 1 and Ps. Sol. 17:34–35 (where the Gentile nations seek Jerusalem φέροντες δῶρα … καὶ ἰδεῖν τὴν δόξαν κυρίου, ἣν ἐδόξασεν αὐτὴν ὁ θεός); cf. Apoc. Bar. lxviii. 5. The idea of 24 and 26 is of course literally inconsistent with those of Revelation 19:17 f. and Revelation 20:12 f., since on the new earth there were no residents except the risen saints. Both ideas were current in rabbinic eschatology (Gfrörer, ii. 238 f.), but the Apocalypse is entirely free from any such complacent estimate of Gentile outsiders (cf. En. xc. 30). The discrepancy here, as in Revelation 22:5, is imaginary. These details are simply poetical and imaginative, inserted from the older symbolism, in which they were quite appropriate, in order by their archaic and pictorial fulness to fill out the sketch of the future city. They have no allegorical significance.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 26. - And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it; that is, the glory and the honour of the nations shall be brought into it. The verb is used impersonally, as in Revelation 10:11 and many other places. A repetition of ver. 24 (vide supra). Revelation 21:26